REM hits the skids again
The REM was in trouble again Tuesday morning, buses being put in service instead. TVA explains that things were fine for people going to Brossard, but that inbound trains were “ralenti”.
Some passengers say they have lost all confidence in the REM.
Blork 13:58 on 2025-03-18 Permalink
Not me. Because (a) I’ve never been a passenger, and (b) I never had much confidence to begin with.
(REM is a nice idea, but a shitshow in practice and execution. The PPP requirement to give it a monopoly on transit from the south shore is the antithesis of good public transit planning. We always knew there would be problems with winter weather. Noise! On and on…)
Nicholas 15:44 on 2025-03-18 Permalink
Instead of naming that station after Bernard Landry, I propose we name all the stations for the people who pushed for and designed the REM without knowing anything about how to design a good transportation system. Then we’ll be able to say things like “Ugh, another train break down at Coderre” or “Stranded at Michael-Sabia OC again.” If we run out of people we could use other ephemera, like renaming Île-des-Soeurs to Le-BAPE,-ce-n’est-pas-le-pape, keeping with our secular heritage.
bob 01:49 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
It’s a fine train – you just can’t get it wet. Or cold. And it doesn’t work well in the sun, or wind. Air and light seem to degrade it’s performance.
The obvious solution is to identify those responsible for this multi-billion dollar quasi-fraud and give them more money.
Here’s a question: if the REM can be, and is regularly, replaced by bus service, couldn’t we have just improved bus service and achieved the same public transit goals? For the ever increasing cost of the REM, currently $9.4 billion, we could have bought something like 4-5,000 electric buses, which would have around five times the passenger capacity. And despite being electric, you can get them wet.
Uatu 09:20 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Improving bus service is what’s good for public transit. A cool and sexy train is what’s good to sell people to buy condos in the developments run by the real estate arm of the pension fund. Which was the original purpose of the REM. I mean you could just set up reserve bus lanes with trolley buses, but that’s not 21st century cool y’know lol
Blork 11:27 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Ultimately, bus service is second-rate to train or subway service, because bus service still uses the road system, so it’s susceptible to traffic, potholes, bad weather, etc. Plus, it means riders have to wait outside for unpredictable wait times, and might end up waiting longer if the bus that arrives is full, etc. (which can be nasty at night or in bad weather).
But… it’s way cheaper (infrastructurally). You get what you pay for.
Joey 11:43 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
@Blork as we are seeing, the REM and the Metro are also susceptible to bad weather, congestion, infrastructure problems, unpredictable wait times, etc. Except that the bus network has much fewer singular points of failure – someone releases pepper spray at Berri and half the Metro shuts down. If there’s road closure, the bus just… goes around it.
Let’s be honest, shiny new expensive commuter trains are for middle-class people; cheap buses are for the poor.
walkerp 12:14 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Not if they were properly financed.
Robert H 12:26 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
All right, we shouldn’t be so impressed with sleek trains gliding above, on, or below ground. And we’re all fed up with REM’s non-stop parade of SNAFUs, but let’s not dismiss fixed-rail transport as an impractical prestige gesture that does nothing to improve a city’s quality of life. Montreal with the métro and commuter rail is certainly better than Montreal without. And there are far more cities without, struggling to build a few kilometres of street car line.
bob 14:55 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Commuter rail was created at a different time for a different demographic with a different lifestyle. If your purpose is to bring workers en masse into the city from bedroom suburbs, rail is a good solution. But we don’t live like that any more.
Commuter rail fifty or a hundred years ago went from suburb to city center, with no reason to connect the suburbs to one another. Most of the people on the trains were office workers, who needed to be stuffed into office buildings, which were built in clusters. For urban areas there were streetcars and some buses, but the mass in mass transit was more or less hub and spoke. That model does not really apply any more.
Blork 15:00 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Yeah, I’m trying to imagine New York or London or Paris without their subway systems. Imagine shifting all those people up to the surface and putting them on buses. What a pile of buses. What chaos!
The other thing about buses is the problem of when your route involves more than one bus. Waiting in the cold or rain for bus A is bad enough, but if half way to your destination you have to get off, walk a few blocks, then wait (Five minutes? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes?) for bus B, that’s a terrible way to get around. Imagine if you have to take a third bus!
This is not a small consideration or just a minor inconvenience. Maybe it’s not so bad if you’re 20 years old and it’s a sunny day in April, but most of the time it is not a sunny day in April. It’s frequently too hot or too cold, or it’s raining or snowing. Older people have a hard time standing around in freezing weather, as do tired people or people who are feeling unwell or have mild disabilities. That’s a significant portion of the ridership.
Compare that with a five minute wait underground (Metro) or in a sheltered train station. Totally different worlds.
Robert H 15:34 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
Right, Blork, and to Bob, I would add that until humanity evolves into stationary cyborg brains living in VR pods, we still need to move about physically from one locale to another even if the reasons that used to prompt us have disappeared. New ones have taken their place and the city will evolve. There’s no reason the spokes can’t be connected beyond the center. Rail and busses complement one another as both are essential components of transport in a large urban area like Montreal.
azrhey 15:37 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
a small part of this video about urbanism in Canada talks about transportation and how the segmentation of the different modes and Canada’s insistence on reinventing the wheel every single time increases costs and diminishes efficiency. https://youtu.be/TS1xp-n1u9w?si=A33u2nPyG7xIyduZ
Joey 16:09 on 2025-03-19 Permalink
@blork yep, that’s a major consideration as well. Of course you can make that experience a lot better but having much more frequent buses and more dedicated bus lanes. Also keep in mind that the prospect of having to descend into the underground to catch the Metro – and quite likely having to ascend on a busted escalator or at a station without an elevator – can turn lots of the people you mention (older, tired, with disabilities, etc.) off the Metro for good.
And, yes, NY or Paris or London or Tokyo couldn’t function without their subways. But we are Montreal, not nearly as populous or as dense, and I am not suggesting we close the Metro – just that if we had a dollar to spend on transit, we could get WAY more bang for our buck investing in the neglected bus network than in some cockamamie scheme to expand the Metro or REM that will take forever, cost at least double its budget, and still be inadequate for any purpose other than stimulating suburban real estate development. If the 30, 55 and 80 ran every five minutes all day long on dedicated lanes, we wouldn’t need a pink line.
MarcG 08:56 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Some other solutions to things-that-make-busses-suck: Study how people use them and design the lines accordingly to reduce transfers, clean them more often, pimp out bus shelters to make waiting in bad weather less crap.
Joey 11:37 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
@MarcG yep, all good suggestions. But also, just generally more buses running more frequently on more dedicated lanes. What’s appealing about the Metro? Outside the deadest times, if you miss one, another is just a few minutes away. And there aren’t other kinds of cars on the tracks to get in the way or slow things down. Exceptional incidents aside, it’s a system that is highly predictable and speedy enough that you generally have a very good sense of how long you might be, worst case scenario. Of course it also means that when things go wrong it’s catastrophic (where’s the shuttle bus again?).
If you miss your bus, your trip is likely screwed.
dwgs 12:39 on 2025-03-20 Permalink
Remember, this is with just one line running, imagine the slowdowns, breakdowns, etc when the whole system goes live.